By Walter Sanders

Magna Grecia! Paestum is the site of well-preserved Greek temples dating to 600 BC. Sharon had visited Paestum some years ago on a press trip and wanted to share its wonders with me. Modern Capaccio-Paestum is also a thriving seaside resort with a wide range of facilities.

Walter and his taxi hero Antonio.

It was Ferragosto, the August holidays, when we arrived at the train station. We stepped out into the afternoon and encountered one person: a taxi driver named Antonio. We introduced ourselves, he loaded our luggage, and asked “Where to?”

“We have no reservations…anywhere,” I said.

“That could be a problem this time of year, but don’t worry, we will find something.”

He immediately called his father who runs a tourism coach business and is well connected with the local lodging providers.

The dad provided suggestions. Antonio called hotels while we drove the seafront hoping for a cancellation or a no show. No luck. We moved away from the seaside to agroturismo establishments located near the numerous mozzarella di bufala enterprises inland. Nothing. We even looked at old style rooming houses. Still nothing.

Antonio called his sister to network with her. After more than an hour of searching we had a lead on a country house owned by one her friends. It was away from the sea…but it was available.

Ricotta di bufala cannoli and a pastry cream cornetto at Tempio.

It turns out the home belonged to a widower who died in January. He had willed it to his two daughters who were hoping to run it as tourism lodging. We were destined to be the first paying guests.

The Antonio network had worked. Over the course of several days, he squired us to some of his preferred spots: Azienda Agricola Tempio for a divine breakfast of bufala milk ricotta stuffed cannoli and Azienda Agricola San Salvatore 1988 for a marvelous fixed price summer lunch of local foods.

We used Antonio for our long hauls to Pasteum, and even once to stock up on groceries. He was a gem to us.

By Walter Sanders

We always tell our readers and friends that Italy is great, but try and avoid it in August. Ferragosto is when Italians have a month of vacation, and many go to the seaside. Those towns are jammed, and the Italians who work there would rather be someplace else.

So we broke one of our own cardinal rules. We were invited to spend time with a friend in Pisciotta on top of a hill overlooking the Cilento Coast south of Salerno. When our hostess needed to commit to some other friends, we had the opportunity to ride with a driver named Francesca to Palinuro.

She was a delight. And incredibly helpful. (She stored an extra bag in her home while we traveled the shore: a generous offer and a guarantee that we would engage her again later in the trip.) We chatted all the way to Palinuro.

Francesca and her husband surprised us at the train station to say buon viaggio when we left Palinuro.

She dropped us off in the center of town near the Pro Loco, an office that might be helpful in finding us a place to stay. If we couldn’t find a place to stay in this busiest month of the year in this seaside town, we could stay with her and her husband in the hills. We thanked her for her kind offer.

It was 1:30 PM when we went to the Pro Loco which serves as the nexus of tourism. It was closed until 4:00 PM. So we decided to have lunch. We returned to the Pro Loco shortly after 4:00 PM. It was locked. We sat on a shaded bench outside the front door and waited. We could her the phone ringing in the office.

About 4:45 PM a lovely lady approached, unlocked the door, put on the lights, and booted up her computer. We gave her some time to get organized, then I entered to discuss finding a room.

She gave me the sad news that every hotel, pensione, B and B room was booked. And most had been reserved for a year. I asked her if she had any recommendations. She asked if we would mind staying with a family, her family,

We stayed with her family in a lovely room with a private bath, broad terraces and a distant view of the sea. It was special.

By Walter Sanders

It was an ideal day of touring in Naples. Via Tribunale was lively with shoppers and tourists taking selfies with the bronze Pulcinella. The funicular ride to Castel Sant’Elmo high above the bay delivered us to a breezy, fresh air mass much cooler than the busy streets of the centro. I shot pictures and videos with my phone.

We splurged on a late lunch overlooking the city, bay, and Mount Vesuvius in the distance. Plates of fresh seafood kept coming. I wandered the terrace and took group photos of families.

It was late afternoon by the time we took another funicular down toward the port. We got off, but we weren’t near the port. I G-mapped to try to figure out our location. At street level, it was hot and humid and we were tired and getting grumpy. We decided to grab a cab and return to the Hotel Palazzo Decumani.

I always like to sit in the front seat in a cab when the driver agrees. Ours did. The cab driver was a delight. We talked about his two sons…the oldest was a partner in the cab business. We stopped at an ATM for some cash. He took us at the hotel and we were glad to be back in air-conditioned comfort.

Salvatore, the spirited Neapolitan bar man at the hotel lounge, was on duty. I reached for my phone to share some of our videos of the city that Salvatore loves. The phone was not in my pocket.

I was devastated. I scrambled. “Sharon, do you have my phone? Have you seen it?”

How stupid to leave a phone in a cab. How dumb to leave a phone in a cab in Naples. I asked Sharon to call my number from her phone. No answer. I asked the hotel desk to call the cab stand where we had caught the cab. “No, we didn’t the driver’s name (but we knew about his family!), we didn’t know the cab company, we didn’t have the driver’s mobile phone.”

I got on-line via my lap top to chat with the phone service provider: Google’s Project Fi.

She asked me whether I wanted to deactivate the phone. “No, not yet,” I typed. “I want 60 minutes. The cab driver was such a good guy.”

We camped out in the hotel lounge on a sofa with a view of the front door. An hour went by. Then 90 minutes. I opened the lap top to chat with Project Fi again. The service person, Michael, pulled up the thread via my mobile number and asked whether I wanted to deactivate the phone.

“There he is!” called Sharon as she jumped up to run to the front door.

It was the taxi driver holding the phone up like a trophy. He saw me. I gave him a big hug and he kissed me on both cheeks. I thanked him, and thanked him again.

“May I offer you something…a glass of wine, a beer?”

“No thank you” he said.

I asked him where he found the phone. He said he had five more fares after us. When he was cleaning out the cab for the night, he noticed a black phone sticking out from under a black floor mat under the seat. He saw English language on the screen cleaning pad attached to the back of the phone. “This belongs to the simpatico Americano who I brought to the Hotel Decumani.”

I hugged and thanked him again. I gave him 50 Euro and waved goodbye as he drove off. When I got back to the lap top and the chat, there were a series of “Walter, are you still on line?” entries.

I typed “Yes! You won’t believe this but the driver just returned with the phone.”

I hogged a full page in the hotel guest book with a drawing of a beaming guy holding a mobile over his right shoulder, a cartoony drawing of a taxi cab with a smiling grill, and a recap of the phone story. That’s when I realized that I had neglected to get the driver’s name.

Sharon and I then traveled to some seaside towns for two weeks. Because we enjoyed Naples so much, we decided to return there earlier for our return flight on Meridiana back to JFK. Sharon booked an AirBandB on lively Via Tribunale and we stayed for a couple of nights.

Francesco Aragiusto, the hero of our taxi tale, with Walter.

One afternoon we enjoyed some time and wine at the port. We decided to grab a cab back to the room. There were a couple of cabs on our side of the street, but no drivers. So we crossed the street to a different cab stand with dozens of drivers at the ready. I acknowledged the nearest, told him where we wanted to go, and asked if I could sit in the front seat. He said yes.

Then we got a better look at each other. He said “I remember you! You left your phone in the cab.”

“And you found it and returned it!” We rubbed each other’s heads and had a mini celebration.

I asked for his name: Francesco Aragiusto. One of the many upright and honest citizens of Naples.

Taxi Tales: Part 2 Palinuro

Journalist David Chim Seymour captured this poignant image of two young girls who could be Elena and Lina in Naples 1948.

As fate would have it, I finished The Story of the Lost Child on a recent stay in Naples.

The last pages resonated with me as I don’t believe they could have anywhere else.

The Story of the Lost Child, is the final book in the Neapolitan quartet by Elena Ferrante. The protagonists are Elena Greco (also called Lenuccia or Lenù) and Raffaella Cerullo (also called Lina or Lila).Elena and Lila were born into a shattered world in August 1944–in a dismal neighborhood in a neglected city that had endured massive bombing during World War II.

My Brilliant Friend

The Story of a New Name

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

The Story of the Lost Child

In the narrative, the girls grow into women and then into old women. Their personas are inseparable even when they are physically apart. For those who have read the novels, nothing I could write would enhance your experience of them. For those who have not read the novels, I can say: If you read the Neapolitan novels you will enter a world you will never forget.

Fans are anticipating the November 2016 release of Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, a nonfiction collection of the author’s writings, to glean insights into the life and work of the fiercely anonymous novelist.

Ferrante elaborated on the word frantumaglia in a May 2016 interview with Nicola Lagioia published in The New Yorker:

“We are, as you say, interconnected. And we should teach ourselves to look deeply at this interconnection—I call it a tangle, or, rather, frantumaglia—to give ourselves adequate tools to describe it. In the most absolute tranquility or in the midst of tumultuous events, in safety or danger, in innocence or corruption, we are a crowd of others. And this crowd is certainly a blessing for literature.”

She mentioned the word also in a Paris Review interview conducted by Europa publishers. “My mother liked to use the word frantumaglia—bits and pieces of uncertain origin which rattle around in your head, not always comfortably.”

While Ferrante would no doubt disapprove, journalists and travel writers are descending upon Naples sleuthing for locations to pin to the narrative. Here are a few interesting reads: The New York Times, NPR, The Irish Times.

I myself followed Ferrante’s footsteps to Piazza dei Martiri in the chic Chiaia shopping district. In the books, this piazza represents a place of aspiration, but never quite assimilation, for some of the characters.

Along the lungomare on a Sunday twilight, I spotted two teens who could be Elena and Lina in 2016. I wondered how different, or maybe in some ways similar, their lives are compared to the Neapolitan novels.

Spaccanapoli, the long wide street that from an aerial view “splits” the city in two parts.

During two August visits, one at the beginning of the month and the other one at the end of the month, to the city by the bay, we experienced these places and tastes. We stayed first at the excellent Palazzo Decumani hotel in the historic center. The property is top notch and the staff wonderful. For the second visit, we booked Soffitta dell’Artista in Mezzanine, through airbandb.com, a guest house and art gallery combined on thriving Via Tribunali. It was fun breakfasting with fellow guests: a family of six from France and a couple from Austria.

Of course, there are gems we didn’t have time for but you need a reason to return to the life of Naples. Click here for more experiences.